About

The Gothic Imagination is based at the University of Stirling, Scotland and provides an interdisciplinary forum for lively discussion and critical debate concerning all manifestations of the Gothic mode. Queries to Dr Timothy Jones on timothy.jones@stir.ac.uk.

2014 January

Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic, edited by Dale Townshend and Angela Wright. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
This collection of essays offers unique and fresh perspectives upon the literary productions of one of the most highly remunerated and widely admired authors of the Romantic period, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823). While drawing upon, consolidating and enriching the critical impulses reflected in Radcliffe scholarship to date, this collection of essays, composed by a range of renowned scholars of the Romantic period, also foregrounds the hitherto neglected aspects of the a

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In considering the ways in which Gothic comic strips and lantern-shows, both forms of mass-entertainments and popular media for well over two centuries, have often until very recently been edited out and sidelined by academic communities, I began to wonder about the present status of activities usually presented on the fringes of Gothic conferences: dance, rock music gigs, quizzes, ghost-walks and similar events.
I asked Michael McCarthy, Director of the Bram Stoker film festival, whether he saw any distinction between presenting such a wide-ranging programme of horror, Gothic-them

A new independent vampire film is in the making in Austin, Texas to quell the appetite for a return to the terrifying threat that the Vampire used to impose in folklore. Josephine McAdam (a Scottish citizen currently residing in Austin) has teamed up with a group of like-minded artists (Miguel Coronado III, J.R. Zambrano and more: spfx artists, illustrators, and writers) after working for 3 years in the Austin film industry to create the high quality independent film that is driven by story and also serves a market which has been seeking a return to the classic Vampire. Josephine also has plan

There are various factors which may have contributed to the marginalisation of the Gothic comic strip and, indeed, 19th century sequential art in general. The ephemeral nature and frequently cheap production values (and hence disposable status), of such material may have proved to be decisive factors. Various perceptions of this medium as a genre associated predominantly with children’s reading may also have played a part with the accompanying sense of this art as trivial or inconsequential, unworthy of study. It must be remembered that Gothic novels themselves often fell foul of suc

The Gothic comic strip excelled at depicting vivid forms of grotesque monstrification especially of those individuals ostracised from mainstream life as in the case of Carl Reinhardt’s fantasy Tailor Lapp (1848-51) where a local tradesman becomes an emaciated wild man of the woods overgrown with hair. In the panel above, the civic guard join the crowds of people flying from the uncanny creature.
Graphic sequences also updated several venerable forms of visual horror tale. Several sets of Alfred Rethel’s successive woodcuts such as the Totentanz sequence (1848) reveal the longevity of

I’d like to open this post on Gothic sequential art, comic strips and related media by thanking Dale Townshend, for inviting me to guest blog during January.
The face of a sinister Frankenstein-like imp skulking in a forest is taken from Nadar’s graphic sequence: Mossieu Réac (1849), and is a caricature of Adolphe Thiers who is supposedly hiding after having two horses shot out from under him, (a reference to his rapid changes in political affiliation.)
In his fine article 'Gothic chapbooks and Horror Comics' for The Gothic Imagination which can be viewed in full here:
http://www.g

About

The Gothic Imagination is based at the University of Stirling, Scotland and provides an interdisciplinary forum for lively discussion and critical debate concerning all manifestations of the Gothic mode. Queries to glennis.byron@stir.ac.uk or dale.townshend@stir.ac.uk